कौसल्यायाः पुरतः भरतस्य शपथाः

In the previous sarga Bharata, having denounced Kaikeyī, had fallen to the ground like an elephant goaded with lance and hook. Now, after a long while, the valiant prince rose, and when his senses returned he looked up with tear-filled eyes at his mother in her misery. There, in the presence of the ministers, he reproached her. His words made a threefold declaration: “I have never wanted the kingdom, and I never took counsel with my mother about it. I knew nothing of the consecration the king had decided on, for I was far away in a distant land, and Śatrughna was with me. I did not know of great-souled Rāma's exile to the forest, nor of the banishment of Sumitrā's son and Sītā, nor how it came about.” That he said this among the ministers matters: Bharata makes not only his mother but the whole royal council his witnesses, so that his innocence should be known to the world. The long swoon shows how hard he had fallen at the end of the last sarga, and though his body's senses returned, his mind found no peace. His speech is no raving but an ordered threefold proof — he had no desire, he had no knowledge, he was in another country — and he names Śatrughna's company as a witness. So the poet prepares the ground for the oaths to come, for only a man who is truly innocent can swear such oaths.

As great-souled Bharata cried out, Kausalyā recognised his voice and said to Sumitrā, “Bharata has come, the son of Kaikeyī whose deeds are cruel. I want to see Bharata, who looks far ahead.” In calling Kaikeyī cruel her anger shows, still unappeased, yet in calling Bharata far-sighted she shows her regard for him. She did not see him; she only heard his cries and knew him by them. Saying this, pale, wasted, trembling and half-conscious, she set out for where Bharata was. At that very moment the prince, with Śatrughna, had set out along the same road for Kausalyā's house. So they moved toward each other and met on the way, and by this meeting the poet hints that one grief lived in both their hearts. When Śatrughna and Bharata saw Kausalyā they were stricken; she had fallen senseless in her sorrow, and they embraced her. Weeping, they came to her as she wept, and held her. Their meeting began in silence, tears their first words. Then the noble, high-minded Kausalyā, deeply grieved, answered Bharata; though she had fallen senseless, her depth and steadiness showed in that she was the first able to speak.

Her words were full of bitter irony. “Here is the kingdom you wanted, and it has come to you without a thorn in it — got quickly, alas, by Kaikeyī through a cruel deed. What good does Kaikeyī, with her cruel eyes, see in sending my son off to live in the forest in bark? Let Kaikeyī send me away too, and quickly, to wherever my famous son of the golden navel now lives.” The golden navel is an auspicious mark, and by it she recalls her son's fitness to be king. “Or I will go myself, gladly, with Sumitrā to attend me and the sacred fire carried before us, to where Rāghava is.” To go with the sacred fire is to take the path of forest retirement, the way of a righteous wife whose husband has died. “Or else, if you like, you can take me there yourself this very day, to where that tiger among men, my son, is practising austerities. For this broad kingdom, heaped with wealth and grain and full of elephants, horses and chariots, has been handed over to you by her.” “Handed over” sounds like a gift but means a seizure. Her three choices — to be sent by Kaikeyī, to go herself, to be taken by Bharata — all come to one wish, to live near Rāma. Her words sprang from grief for her son, not from enmity, yet to Bharata they were as hard to bear as poison.

Rebuked with many such harsh words, the blameless Bharata was pierced to the quick, as a wound is probed by a needle. The image is finely chosen: the needle goes into a wound already open, and his mother's words doubled the pain he already bore. By calling him blameless the poet himself declares his innocence, leaving the reader no doubt. His mind in turmoil, he fell at her feet — he answered first with his body, not his words — and after lamenting again and again he lost consciousness and only later came to. He had fainted twice now, once before Kaikeyī and once before Kausalyā, and this shows not bodily weakness but the violence of the blow to his mind. Then, with folded hands, Bharata spoke to Kausalyā, who was lamenting, wrapped in many sorrows: “Noble lady, why do you blame me? I knew nothing and I have done no wrong. You know how great and how steadfast my love for Rāghava is.” In saying “you know”, he calls her own heart as his witness, and at the start of his oaths that is his only refuge. What follows is one of the most remarkable passages in the whole Ayodhyā Kāṇḍa: a long garland of oaths by which he means to prove his innocence.

The oaths all take one shape. The first half of each names some sin, and the second half repeats a refrain: “whoever it was by whose consent my noble brother went to the forest” — let that sin fall on him. In the first he said, “May his mind never follow the teaching of the scriptures, and may he never be true to his word or the best of the good.” Then one after another: may he become the drudge of the basest men, urinate facing the sun, kick a sleeping cow; may the guilt be his of a master who makes his servant do great work and leaves him unpaid; the guilt of those who betray a king who guards his people like his own children; the guilt of a king who takes a sixth of the harvest as his due and yet does not protect his subjects — for the scriptures hold that protection is the king's return for that share; the guilt of those who promise priests their fee at a sacrifice and then cheat them of it; may he not keep the code of honourable men in a battle thronged with elephants, horses and chariots and thick with weapons; and may that wicked soul lose the subtle teaching his master carefully gave him. This way of swearing is ancient: to prove his own purity a man calls a great sin down on another. But notice that Bharata never says “may this sin be mine”; he says “may it fall on the one who consented to Rāma's going”, and so sets himself apart from that person. The sins are chosen with care, too, rising from lighter to heavier: first the mind's straying from scripture, then bodily impurity, then treason and a king's own crimes.

The second cluster turns to the duties of family life. “May he never see that broad-shouldered one, splendid as sun and moon, seated on the throne” — to see Rāma consecrated is itself a great blessing, and to be cheated of it is a curse. “May that pitiless man eat milk-rice, gruel and goat's flesh without offering them first, and may he despise his elders. May he touch cows with his foot, speak ill of his teachers and utterly betray his friend. May that wicked soul spread abroad the slander told him privately in trust. May he do no one any service and acknowledge none done him, lose all self-control and all shame, and be hated in the world. Surrounded at home by sons, wives and servants, may he eat the choicest food alone. May he die childless, never having found a wife worthy of him and never having performed the rites that righteousness requires. May he never see children of his own, but be wretched among his own wives and die before his time.” These oaths touch every part of a householder's dharma — food, guests, elders, friends, wife, children, long life. The curse of eating the best food alone follows the well-known teaching of the law-books that one who feasts by himself, leaving out his household, incurs sin. In these oaths a whole picture of the householder's life of Vālmīki's time can be seen. And Bharata's passion shows in them: a man usually sparing of speech and humble now pours out curse after curse.

The third cluster names the faults of a man of power. “Whatever guilt is said to lie in killing a king, a woman, a child or an old man, and in abandoning one's servants, may all of it be his. May he always feed his dependants by trading in lac, honey, meat, iron and poison.” These five are wares the law-books forbid, and to live by them is a sinful livelihood. “When battle is joined and terror strikes the enemy's ranks, may he be cut down as he runs away” — the reverse of a warrior's dharma, for to die struck from behind is the lowest end a warrior can meet. “May he wander the earth begging like a madman, dressed in rags, a skull-bowl in his hand” — the garb of penance of one guilty of the gravest sin, who must live on alms for twelve years. “May he always be given over to drink, women and dice, mastered by lust and anger. May his mind never turn to righteousness; may he practise wrong and pour his gifts like rain on the unworthy. May the wealth he has piled up in a thousand forms be plundered by robbers. And whatever guilt falls on one who sleeps through both twilights, may that be his” — wasting the hours of morning and evening prayer in sleep is a fault the law-books condemn. In these oaths there are echoes of the duties of the classes and of statecraft — forbidden trade, flight from battle, gifts to the unworthy — and so Bharata swears by the authority of both custom and scripture.

The fourth cluster reaches the great sins. “Whatever guilt belongs to one who sets a house on fire, one who violates his teacher's bed, and one who betrays a friend, may all of it be his.” These three are counted in the scriptures among the gravest sins, which makes this the heaviest part of the whole garland; the law-books list five great sins, among them the violation of the teacher's bed, and to that Bharata joins arson and treachery to a friend. “May he never serve the gods, the ancestors, or his mother and father” — failing in what one owes to these is itself spoken of as a curse. “May he fall this very day from the world of the good, from the good name of the good and from the deeds good men cherish” — even the world beyond is taken from him, and here the oaths reach their height. “Casting aside service to his mother, may he stand fast in ruin. May he be poor with many mouths to feed, sick with fever, in endless distress. May he dash the hopes of the wretched who look up with longing eyes, begging. May he be a slanderer, unclean, unrighteous, afraid of the king, always taking pleasure in deceit. And may that wicked soul pass over his own virtuous wife when she has bathed after her season and comes to him at her fertile time.”

The last cluster names sins concerning brahmins and water. “Whatever evil belongs to a brahmin whose children have been destroyed, may that be his. May he, with his foul senses, disrupt the worship being offered to a brahmin, and milk a cow whose calf is still young” — to milk a cow whose calf is still suckling is cruelty itself. “Abandoning his lawful wife, may he, a fool who has lost all delight in righteousness, go after other men's wives. Whatever guilt belongs to one who fouls drinking water and one who gives poison, may he alone receive it all.” Fouling water and giving poison are counted as equal sins, for water is the life of every creature. “Whatever guilt a man incurs who cheats someone parched with thirst when water is at hand, may that be his” — to deceive the thirsty is itself a kind of violence. “And may he incur the guilt of one who stands by the road and watches men quarrel, taking sides.” This last oath is the subtlest of all: even the silent onlooker who favours one side in a quarrel shares the guilt, so that sin is gathered not only by deeds but by a partial eye. So Bharata counts every kind of sin, from outer to inner and from gross to subtle, and stands ready to call it all down on whoever consented to Rāma's exile.

Even as he was comforting Kausalyā, bereft of husband and son, the grief-stricken prince fell to the ground. Kausalyā spoke to Bharata as he lay senseless and burning with grief after swearing those terrible oaths: “My son, this sorrow of mine only grows. By swearing these oaths you are choking the life out of me.” Here a mother's tenderness shows: the oaths could not soothe her grief, only deepen it; the very oaths meant to comfort her were stifling her, for a son cursing himself is more than a mother can bear. Then she comforted him: “Thank heaven your heart has not swerved from righteousness, nor Lakṣmaṇa's. You keep your word, my child, and you will win the worlds of the good.” With these words Kausalyā's doubt was wholly gone, and Bharata's innocence was proved from a mother's own lips. She sees in it the grace of fortune, and her blessing — that he will win the worlds of the good — answers his oaths exactly: what he had wished on another, she gives him in reverse.

So saying, Kausalyā drew Bharata, who so loved his brother, into her lap, embraced the long-armed prince and wept in bitter grief. She took him onto her lap like a child, and in that her motherhood was restored. This embrace is the outcome of the sarga: reproach has turned into forgiveness, suspicion into trust. Yet Bharata's grief did not abate. As the great-souled prince lamented, his mind was thrown into confusion by his swooning and the violence of his sorrow. Babbling, senseless, his understanding gone, lying on the ground, sighing long again and again — so he passed that night in grief, without sleep. With “that night” the poet shows one whole span of time filled with nothing but sorrow, and makes his last picture not a word or a deed but simply the night itself. In the next sarga Vasiṣṭha will raise Bharata up and direct him to perform Daśaratha's funeral rites.